


Sun Touched, Moon Scorched

by Heronfem



Series: Author's Favorites [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gaelic American Jack, Homesickness, M/M, Pride, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 17:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13486515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: He doesn't let himself think too hard about when the night wind gets cold and some little piece of him reaches out, hopeless, calling back to something and somewhere long past.He doesn't think about the little things they do, because if he thinks to hard he might touch truth.





	Sun Touched, Moon Scorched

There's a certain kind of sense memory that whistles through him when they pass through Scotland. It's a short trip, a tiny layover before getting carted off somewhere, and he's trapped under watch. It's a strange thing, as if something in him's twisting here and there, some old call to put down roots and vanish into the hills and never return- but vivid blue sky and rustling corn wash through the rest of him, and instead he stands there, silent, looking out over the heath.

“Fucking cold,” Gabriel mutters.

“Yeah,” he says, skin crawling with ancestral memory. “Real cold.”

oOo

His father is big. A big, tall, strapping man, with grey eyes and hair that goes auburn under the sun but seems brown inside the house. He's a proper man, with the beard and rumbling voice and shoes in a size that no one can ever fill. Quiet, but strong, a reflective man. To everyone but government offices, his name is Kaden. His full name is Ceardach Oidhche Morrison, but the last name in a carefully passed down family bible reads O'Muircheasain-.

His mother is a firm but loving woman, a tiny thing with wild blonde hair streaked with strands of copper that gleamed in the sun. She's a proper woman, quietly but firmly religious and the driving force of a farm. Poverty is poverty, and farming doesn't change many things. Money is always tight, money will always be tight, but Rhagonailt Gormlaith Smith-Morrison is a woman of careful cunning and a vicious barterer. 

It's a silly thing, the names. 

That what he tells himself, looking in the mirror. Who cares? The families- both families, mind you- had lived in Scotland and then they moved and here he was, stuck in buttfuck nowhere Indiana surrounded by corn. No amount of silly names would change that. Corn and sunlight and cows and meth, if he's being honest, and why would they saddle him with some god-awful name that no one could pronounce?

But he knows.

America is not an old country yet. All of its traditions are steeped in consumerism, or cheap relics of the old country, wherever the old country is. And they have pictures. They are fragile things, but pictures none the less, of a man with blonde hair standing next to a woman in a modest dress, with Jack's nose and eyes. They bring the names with them. They bring the stories, the whispered things, the memories, the desperate drive to put the foot down and say, _no. Not today, for this is mine! How dare you?_ Names to shape and mold them into people worthy of them, names that dive deep down to the old pieces that can't be cut out. He can run over Indiana fields, bury himself in rich soil and delight in the sun, but at the end off the day he is still Seonaidh Morrison, child of the O'Muircheasain and the Criatharach, sun touched and moon scorched with history's claws sunk into his bones.

He doesn't let himself think too hard about when the night wind gets cold and some little piece of him reaches out, hopeless, calling back to something and somewhere long past.

He doesn't think about the little things they do, because if he thinks to hard he might touch truth.

oOo

He stands in front of the United Nations council, his face a perfect mask as they butcher his name. The reader, the representative from England, sniffs slightly and clasps his hands together.

“Sorry,” he says, leaning in to the microphone, “but let me correct you. My name is pronounced 'Shony', not 'Sinead'. Just to clarify.”

He gives his report without flinching, stares straight ahead.

 _How dare you, how dare you?_ Ancestral memory rises up with rage and destruction, while his face stays a perfect mask of the perfect soldier, image of Americana. _My people, my family, my land, my home, how dare you take this from me? My duty, my honor!_

He leaves the hearing, sits in the base. France, this time. 

“Hey, Jack.”

“Not much up for talking, Gabriel,” he says, staring at the ceiling. 

Gabriel sits next to him on the bed, looking like hell. He has new scars since they last managed to steal some time together in Gibraltar, ugly pink skin starting to heal up where his eyebrow's been bisected. “Heard you mouthed off to the officials.”

“It was worth it. They'll make me pay for it, but at least they could get my fucking name right. British fuckers.” He rubs his forehead, feeling a migraine coming on. “They've got me on a leash, and they're giving me just enough rope to hang myself with.”

Gabe bends down, and Jack squeezes his eyes shut at the kiss to the middle of his forehead.

“I hate it when you get all soft on me when I'm mad,” he mutters, rolling over. Gabe is busy pulling off his boots.

“I hate it when you beat yourself up over shit, so that makes two of us,” Gabe mutters, and climbs into bed to wrap around him. Jack can feels some of the tension slip away now, and lets himself be held for a bit. Gabe buries his face against him, like some great overgrown cat, and Jack thinks to himself how easy it would be, to die right now. To just- cease. To stop. Safe, and held, and no bombs or bullets or hellscape crashing in around him.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“They're worth at least a dollar,” Jack tells him, stomach lurching as he pushes the idea away.

“You're an expensive date, Morrison.”

“It's been said.”

He closes his eyes, lets himself be held. Inside his chest, a yawning cavern of homesickness for a place he’s never called home opens up. He pushes it away, thinks of golden fields and laughter, soil near bursting with life. He feels torn in two, missing both. He is made of both, ancient history written on his bones, blood and dirt buried under his fingernails and the taste of sorrow in his mouth.

He feels old.

“Take me home,” he says softly, thinking of a small room they share, of beautiful fabric on the bed in elaborate colors, of quiet breathing and pictures of an endless golden sea beside others of staggering works of art and culture. He has a home, in a place he does not love, but with the person that he loves the most. Gabriel kisses his forehead again, lips lingering as his eyes close in defeat.

“I will,” Gabriel says. “I will.”


End file.
